Something I'd Like...

art by Chaz Truog

...Is a game set in a retro-future along the lines of Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark stories or C.L. Moore’s tales of Northwest Smith.  A setting with a dessicated and dangerous Mars, a fecund and mist-choked Venus, and a colonial Earth trying to exploit the both of them. A setting where outlaws of the spaceways have to contend with the remnants of prehuman civilizations, outré natives, and of course, the Patrol.  The (relatively) grittier worlds of Brackett and Moore were an interesting corrective to the shiny rocket science fantasies of the likes of Captain Future (by Brackett’s husband-to-be, Edmund Hamilton) and the like.

I’m such a fan of that brand of now-outdated pulp sci-fi, that I did my own version, PLANET X, for Zuda Comics. Zuda’s now gone, a victim of reshuffling at DC and its parent Time-Warner, so I can no longer link to it, but briefly: it was a sci-fi/spy-fi story set in an alternate timeline where a habitable solar system saw the Cold War play out on an interplanetary scale in the swinging sixties. Burroughs meets Bond, more or less.

Anyway, I suppose since it doesn’t look like anyone's going to give me a Brackett/Moore-esque game anytime soon, I may have to do my own at some point.

If I ever make it out of the City...

Weird Adventures: A Touch of Class

art by Shipeng Li

After some consideration, and advice from others, I think I’ve decided on the classes for my upcoming Weird Adventures campaign. I’m  to keep the basic classes simple and use occupations/concepts similar to Akratic Wizardry’s backgrounds to “pulp-ify” them.

Here are the classes I have in mind, with the classic D&D classes they'll be based on:

Tough Guy (Fighter): The muscle.  Those who make their living through force of arms.

Man of Faith (Cleric): Miracle-workers--“The Gifted” I’ve mentioned before. Individuals who derive magical like abilities from their faith alone and don’t cast traditional spells.  Unlike the traditional cleric,the Man of Faith is not necessarily part of a church hierarchy.

Magic Man (Magic-User): These are scholars, experts in the magical arts. Some are thaumaturgists, who approach magic as a science, while others use their learning in the furtherance of their religious order--though the way these two groups cast spells is identical. Also included here are the mystics, who are more intuitive than “scientific” spell-casters.

Ace of Agility (Thief): Individuals who stand apart because of their nimbleness and skill. Some are indeed thieves in inclination and vocation, but others are circus acrobats, escape artists, or even film actors adept at physical comedy.

The above are given “male” names but that should in no way be construed to mean their strictly male.  A tough guy can just as easily be a “tough gal.”

Soon, I’ll present the occupations which will put a lot a flesh on the class bones and allow for pulp stand-bys like the private eye, or the two-fisted scientist.

Tramp Steamer to Yian

In 5886, as part of Gillam M. Bezoar’s Exotic Port’s O’Call newsreel travelogue series, writer Dan Carmody and a camera man shipped out from San Tiburon on a tramp steamer, the S.S. Venture, bound for Hyaishang, Yian. Here are excerpts from the notes Carmody made on the journey...

Only a couple of hours out from the port of San Tiburon. Capt. Clanton points out the islands called “The Teeth”--no doubt a name given them due to their appearance, or perhaps its because of the sharks that infest the waters around them. The Captain reports a story he’s many times heard in a waterfront dives that the isles are a sacred spot to sea devils who rise from the depths on moonless nights to worship their demon god-fish--some gigantic prehistoric shark, the tales reckon--in gruesome rites.

Four days out and we arrive in Pyronesia. This archipelago is every bit the tropical paradise it's often made out to be. We were there for two days, and I managed to make a trip (as close as I dared) to the volcanic peak of the Big Island. I glimpsed a lava child rising from the flows beneath; my native guide suggested we give them wide berth. They’re rarely hostile, but given their size and nature, it isn’t hard to see how their simple-minded playfulness could be dangerous.

Capt. Clanton’s skirt-chasing got him into trouble on one of the nameless islands of Oceania. A tribe of amazonian women seeking help from the spirits in their incessant warfare with the crabmen of the neighboring atoll decided to offer up Clanton and a crewman as sacrifices to their tiki idol. Only timely intervention of the first mate saved them.

On the subject of the crabmen: these odd humanoids are a common sight on the smaller islands throughout the south seas.  The belligerence between them and the human islanders is total; they attack each other on sight.  No islander I met even knows if the crabmen are capable of speech.  Certainly, the crabmen never initiate negotiation themselves.  Strangely, neither I nor any of the crew have ever seen a crabwoman.  I have seen odd wooden idols among the natives carved in the form of voluptuous human females with crustacean claws for hands.  In contrast to the almost obscene detail lavished on the bodies of these fetishes, the faces are carved smooth and featureless. Clanton (always one with a sea story) says that he has heard that these idols are images of the goddess of the crabmen, brood mother to them all, who is also held in superstitious dread by the natives.

A sailor off a Yianese junk traded me this print of a rather contemplative Demon Islander for a pack of Djinn cigarettes. We didn’t visit (for obvious reasons) the so-called Demon Islands. The red-skinned, horned humanoids inhabiting the archipelago live in a warrior-based society still ruled by the sword. Barely beyond a medieval level of technology, their raiding parties are only dangerous to their closest neighbors--though grim stories are told of the fate of those shipwrecked on their shores.